Performativity in Science: Past and Future

ABSTRACT Performativity is the capacity of science to exert influence on the very phenomena it seeks to describe, for instance, when an economic prediction of a recession creates expectations which, in turn, make the occurrence of a recession more likely. Is this capacity something that threatens the epistemic import of science and its ethical integrity, or is it something that may have legitimate roles to play and that we might sometimes even cheer for? Although previous accounts tended to adopt a negative view, philosophers of science now increasingly grant performativity a productive role in science. This paper reviews this development and suggests pathways for future research. In particular, granting that performativity has legitimate roles to play does not imply that anything goes; rather, we then need to go about demarcating legitimate from illegitimate ways of dealing with this phenomenon. To give structure to this important research project, I suggest two broad families of demarcation strategies, one focused on aligning performativity with the epistemic goals of science and the other focused on the ethical and social desirability of performativity.